“Forever War,” compared to other American wars such as Vietnam
In the Greater Middle East, the American military has been placed at a position where it is engaging in a war without a clear purpose or aim for more than three decades, thereby making the war appear as if it has no end. The list of countries in the Greater Middle East that the US has engaged in militarily continues to increase. To understand the strategy of any war, one needs to understand what people can make of it, the nature of the struggle and its consequences. For the war in the Greater Middle East, it has no coherent understanding, nor does it have a cohesive character. Therefore, to understand the “Forever War,” it is crucial to compare it to other American wars such as Vietnam that was also a protracted, and the United States found it hard to win militarily.
Americans had no interest in the Middle East before the statement by President Carter in 1980. There was a declaration to the effect that the Persian Gulf was a vital security interest for the United States. However, following the declaration, his intention was not fighting a war, nor did he anticipate the consequential effect of the war or its protracted nature. Back in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the reserves for fossil fuels was fast diminishing making the Persian Gulf oil a vital interest.[1] However, it was not only oil that was a motivating factor in the war. America was also drawn into dealing with a threat of instability in the region in an attempt to make the area conducive for US interests.
During the first phase of the war from 1980-1991, there was no strategy in place that was guiding the policy of the United States. The war was characterized by covert and open operations that included assisting different parties in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein and jihadists in Afghanistan, who were attempting to oust Soviet occupiers.[2] The military interventions by the United States appeared as a matter of routine as opposed to strategy. After assisting Saddam Hussein, when he invaded Kuwait, the US intervened to restore the sovereignty of Kuwait. The result was that the US continued to make many commitments in the Middle East in different places.
The second phase ran from 1992 to 2002, and the military under President Bush continued to make interventions in the region. The US during this phase used the dual containment policy. The dual containment policy entailed the 1990s containment of both Iraq and Iran.[3] Consequently, low-level conflicts arose with Iraq, which offended Osama Bin Laden leading to his declaration of war against the United States. He started masterminding attacks against US assets across the world. The response of the then President Clinton was to launch airstrikes that escalated the conflict.
Afterward, the then President Bush declared a global war that, in reality, started with the punishment of Afghans for hosting Al-Qaida. Operation Enduring Freedom, even while marking the end of the second phase, was still an indication of the routine nature of the interventions. However, a strategy known as Freedom Agenda was developed starting the third phase in 2003 until 2011. The strategy was to change the way people in the Middle East live by transforming the countries, which acted as breeding grounds for the violence meted against America.[4] Therefore, the starting point that was chosen was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq considering its weakened army. However, the complexity of the conflict in the region ranging from anti-western jihad, ancient sectarian strife, and civil conflict, made the interventions difficult. This led to the collapse of the phase three strategy even as the war escalated.
The escalation witnessed in the Middle East was similar to what happened in the Vietnam War, where escalation could not be explained as a matter of foreign policy or a consequence of a strategy for transforming overseas territories. The escalation could be because of the fear of past losses, such as Truman’s loss in China. Therefore, the use of more troops acted as a response to a situation that was already out of control in both instances. Due to the politics involved in the wars, the wars became long-term, even as the strategies developed to revolutionizing and stabilizing the regions while protecting allies. However, they were mainly action and reaction as opposed to a specific strategy process leading to a stalemate that then led to withdrawal. However, the challenge according to Henry Kissinger in the Vietnam War was withdrawing as a matter of policy and not defeat.[5] Therefore, success was not complete military victory but ending the war and winning the peace.
Similarly, in the Middle East, following the failure of the different strategies, a counterinsurgency strategy was used in the form of a surge. The US withdrew from Iraq but did not admit defeat. Similarly, Obama used the Counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan by withdrawing troops. However, even as soldiers were being withdrawn, military activities in other parts of the Middle East were expanding. This is different from the Vietnam withdrawal that was meant to ensure peace.[6] Besides, there is a current Iran crisis, which threatens to drag the US back to war. It has seen tweets from President Trump on the obliteration of Iran if there is an attack on American interests.[7] This is despite him campaigning on a platform of no more wars in the Middle East. However, the Trump regime is also seen as adopting a strategy of transformation by protecting its allies, such as Saudi Arabia against Iran threats.
In conclusion, the use of military force cannot always answer every question of foreign policy strategy. It is for this reason that American long wars share a lot. The Vietnam and Middle East Wars both involved the mixing of political and military strategy without a clear definition of the purpose and consequence of that war. Therefore, both wars have exposed the limitation of the American military in certain circumstances, thereby requiring the help of policymakers to come up with a coherent strategy. Policymakers must rethink how each military action is vital to American interests and how they can be achieved based on existing capabilities. As a result, the strategy of reconstruction that Americans attempted to use in the long wars can succeed but not necessarily through military conquest.
[1] Karl Mueller et al., “U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East and Implications for the Army,” 2017, 2, doi:10.7249/pe265.
[2] Mueller, “US Strategic Interests,” 6.
[3] Ibid, 2.
[4] Mueller, “US Strategic Interests,” 3.
[5] Gregory A. Daddis, “American Military Strategy in the Vietnam War, 1965–1973,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2015, 11, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.239.
[6] Daddis, “American Military Strategy,” 31.
[7] Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop, “U.S. Involvement in the Middle East,” Council on Foreign Relations, last modified June 26, 2019, https://www.cfr.org/event/us-involvement-middle-east.